Age of the audience

The aging of audiences for classical music can be traced here in America to the way it was presented via Radio, Television and Recordings. We have to go back to the year 1937 when the NBC Symphony was formed for Arturo Toacanini. David Sarnoff the head of NBC was a very shrewd business man who contracted the world famous conductor to direct a most unusual symphony orchestra. One which was not a non-profit organization run by a board of directors, rather it was a corporate entity sponsored by NBC. Concerts were free and open to the public in their specially built state of the art studio, namely Studio 8H in the RCA Building in NYC. The NBC symphony was funded by sponsors who paid for the air time during which the symphony was broadcasting. As an added bonus, when people heard the broadcasts they could then purchase recordings of the NBC Symphony which were released on RCA Victor records which was owned by NBC. The National Broadcasting Company purchased the Victor Talking Machine Co. in the late 1920's and renamed it RCA Victor. The combination of broadcasts over a very large radio network and eventually television network, plus the sale of records made the NBC Symphony quite profitable for Sarnoff's enterprise.

When Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic presented the "Young People's Concerts" they were attractive not only to young people, but also their parents. They were presented as live televised concerts presented first at Carnegie Hall and then later at Philharmoinc Hall in Lincoln Center. The audience attending the performances comprised only a tiny part of the actual audience because these concerts were televised throughout the CBS television network. Lenny was a hot property for CBS and was able to capitalize on his exposure as CBS was recording him with the New York Philharmonic on Columbia Records which was then owned by CBS. A very neat profitable venture.

By 1954 we had entered the age of Television and the NBC Symphony was a product of the radio era. There were 10 concerts presented on NBC Television starting in 1948 and went to about 1952. It appears that the sight of 100 men playing in a symphony did not make for very exciting television in an era when audiences were being fed soap operas, variety shows, quiz shows, cowboy westerns, etc. Finding sponsors for the NBC Symphony in the 1950's was difficult and in addition to Toscanini's ill health, Sarnoff decided to disband the NBC Symphony. NBC's commitment to classical music ended at this point. The orchestra tried to exist as an independent ensemble named "The Symphony of The Air" it was not successful.

When Bernstein resigned as conductor of the New York Philharmonic, the era of the Young People's Concerts ended. An attempt was made to have them continue under Michael Tilson Thomas, but that proved to be unsuccessful. This ended CBS's commitment to classical music. Columbia Records kept the Bernstein recordings in their catalog because the continued to be good sellers.

At the time when both Toscanini and Bernstein were engaged by the major broadcasting entities, those entities were eager to have them aboard as they were profitable. Some years ago in an interview with Kurt Masur, he stated that in the 30's 40's and 50's major broadcasting networks gladly paid big bucks to underwrite these programs. Today a producer would have to pay the networks the big bucks to present this type of programming.

Today we would not see a situation as with Toscanini and NBC, because NBC no longer owns RCA Victor and we would not see the situation as with Bernstein and CBS as CBS no longer owns Columbia Records. The Broadcast to Recordings era has past.

When these concerts disappeared from peoples radio and TV sets, we started to loose the first generation of future classical music audiences. The majority of the audiences for this type of concert are those who grew up with those great performances.
We need to get classical music back on the major networks not just on PBS if we are going to have future generations going to concert halls.

Ira Kraemer

As comprehensive as you were above, Ira, you passed over a few "whys"...everything happens for a reason, after all.

Television wasn't kind to the NBC Symphony because it is a visual, and at that time, small-screen medium. It lives on intimacy and closeup. Soaps, quizzes, Westerns and the like all worked with small groups of performers - in addition to carrying over program formats from radio days, some of which drew bigger ratings than classical all along.

Why is it the Symphony of the Air didn't do well without Toscanini, or the Young People's Concerts without Bernstein? The answer: strong personalities. The public comes to expect and want them, and "without them it's just not the same." Even a lot of well-versed classical listeners feel this way. Now, we shouldn't cave in to the cult of fame, but we shouldn't pretend it's not a factor either.

I don't have any ready answers to what might be done (or might have been done in earlier eras), but a bit of analytical thinking here and there wouldn't go amiss.

It's a rare perspective in a field of specialists and super-specialists, though. As a part-time musician, sometimes I really feel for the music community. It's really not taught or trained to see itself in context, either in the arts or in society. Too much of that analysis and you lose focus as an artist; too little and you are helpless to understand the world you live in.

Very well said, Paul. I think you've got the balance just right.

Well, in 1904 (the reference to Howard's End), the average lifespan was still under 50; 25 was middle aged! Also, musical literacy was part of society's expectation of education.

I'm not convinced recordings are to blame. In the 1940's and 1950's (according to my elders) young people anticipated classical record releases the way we anticipate U2's new release on iTunes today.

How can we as composers and musicians create excitement for the breadth of creation we call classical music?

I have no answers except that we carry forward what we deem important, and that participation begets appreciation, not the other way around. Bernstein engaged his young audiences; he created an exciting experience. Just putting high school students in a MA class and expecting them to suddenly to love classical music isn't going to happen.

It takes small steps over and over and over. I began dragging my son to classical music concerts at 4, and to Shakespeare when he was 5. Too young? No way. Of course he didn't understand, but the ear is a very sensitive instrument. I recently got a composition commission because my son attended a chamber concert in the small rural town where he works. How cool is that!! He's paying it forward--he dragged half the town's 20-somethings with him (all five of them).

These are complicated issues, and life in the past wasn't the same as it is now, but it's really not accurate to say that 25 was middleaged in 1904. Life expectancy might have been under 50, but those figures are skewed by deaths early in life. Once you got into young adulthood, you found people of all ages surrounding you, as Forster's novel shows. As does anything you'll read from the past -- Jane Austen, Dickens, Shakespeare. People 25 years old acted young, just as 25 year-olds do now. So their interest in classical music was young people's interest.

(Technical aside: life expectancy figures will tell you something about the average lifespan, but this is one of the many cases in which averages are misleading. A median lifespan would be much more helpful to know.)

Don't be mislead by life expectancy stats. A life expectancy of under 50 doesn't mean that the average

Greg, can you explain why the BBC Proms seems to buck the trend, year after year when it comes to younger audiences? I don't see evidence of it in other London venues and I wonder where all these young people are the rest of the year. Does the continued success of the Proms tell us anything useful?

Nicky

Hi, Nicky. Nice to see you here.

I'm sure the success of the proms, with a young audience, tells us something useful. I'd tend to credit Roger Wright, the genius at the BBC who currently runs them. And I know that this year he hired my friend Peter Gregson, a young cellist, to create things on the Proms website that younger people (Peter's own age) would respond to. Apparently with gigantic success. So that's one quick lesson. Bring in people of the age you want to reach, and listen to them when they tell you what to do.

But I'm sure there's more, and I wish I knew the story.